I’m enjoying two books right now:
Edward Buscombe, Cinema Today. The author argues that 1970 onwards represents the third age of cinema. It’s full of fascinating cinema facts like how Jaws was the first film to undergo “saturation marketing” that led to a massive increase in the promotional budgets for the films we endure today. Personally, I think all that marketing hype is a battle with ever decreasing returns. Web 2.0 will ensure that film buffs talk to each other before the marketeers get to us, but that is the subject of a much longer post some other time.
Joe Leydon’s, Movies You Must See (if you read, write about or make movies). Mr Leydon is a great, great film reviewer. Only on reading this book can I use the shorthand phrase “Rashomon episode” to explain away a parliamentary difficulty usually requiring 300 words.
So it was with great disappointment that I read this fascinating article in the film section of the Guardain about how terrestrial television is starving a generation of their introduction to classic films.
Personally, I think that this might be a good thing for the Mr Buscombes and Mr Leydons of this world. If I could click on an Amazon list for all the films in Joe Leydon’s book I would. In fact, Amazon and LoveFilm have a lot of the early stuff unavailable to rent. They’ll get there eventually though and when they do, we’ll all be watching Nosferatu again. Or if you don’t mind a tiny screen, you can even watch the streamed version.
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Many, many thanks for your kind words.
As for the dearth of classic and/or foreign-language films on terrestrial TV: I can’t help feeling a bit sad about this, because while I was growing up in New Orleans during the ‘60s, I saw many notable films for the first time when they aired on local television stations. I was a big horror movie buff as a child, and spent many Saturday nights feasting on Dracula, Frankenstein, Werewolf of London and other Universal classics when they were presented on WWL-TV’s “House of Shock†(hosted by Morgus the Magnificent). As I got older, my attention turned to another local station – an independent one, not affiliated with any of the major broadcast networks — that filled many hours with such eclectic fare as Make Mine Mink, Shoot the Piano Player (English-dubbed, of course), The Lavender Hill Mob and David and Lisa. It was a great (and cheap) way to begin my cinematic education.
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